When do you think people will finally start to understand atheism?

Alright, so a couple of days ago I was talking to a friend of mine in class. And we began to talk about religion. Now I'm far from the kind of person that likes to showcase my views on things, But I told him I was an Atheist. He Actually didn't believe me at first, and said that people have to take a oath to become an atheist. We literally argued about this for 5 whole minutes before I finally said lets go to an computer and get google the definition. after I showed him what atheism actually is, He still retained doubt. I just said forget it, and ended the conversation on it there.

What I'm asking is how long will people remain that ignorant on atheism. It's not like he's dumb when it comes to other topics. He says He's a christian and he never even read the bible. And when I told him and another friend I read it They Laughed. Oh yeah and I forgot to mention one of the guys laughing has a tattoo that says "blessed" on his chest. And he never read the bible. That's just stupid to me, But I kinda want to know what other people think about this.

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What I think is interesting is that every sect of Christianity says that in order to be a 'True" Christian you must do this or that and somehow they never agree on just what that is... How does that work>?

Many points to reply to here, but I'll take just one on, that's perhaps the easiest to counter. I should state that I'm not actually taking a position on this, just pointing out a fact, and possible a correlation.

You infer that, since Christians make up 98.6% of the population, claiming that Atheism is a more intellegent stance is tantamount to claiming to be 'smarter than 98.6% of all Americans'. Perhaps that wasn't what the asker is getting at, but isn't it empically true that there must be a 'smartest 3.4%' of the population? I doubt such a thing could ever be measured accurately, but it does theoretically exist, a fact you must accept if you believe there is such a thing as intelligence and that it varies among the population. Now, if this is all true, then there could, in principle, be a correlation established (or shown not to exist) between athiesm and intelligence.

As I've already said, this is too complex and issue to conduct any sort of accurate study on, but I leave it to you now to look up just one example of something that might border on proving what I've asserted: check statistics on the percentage of Ph.D.-holding scientists are religious, compared to the percentage of the general population. To be clear, I'm certainly not claiming that having a Ph.D. in the sciences in any way ensures that one is intelligent, but the correlation exists.

P.S. I look forward to your meteoric rise to fame when you reveal the evidence showing that Jesus Christ was a historical figure.

Stalin again! Yes, Stalin was an atheist - one who used the Russian Orthodox Church to get the believing and faithful herd to do as it was told - and the ROC was right there at Stalin's side, all the way, just as it had been beside the tsars - who were dictatorial monsters of the theistic sort. And let's not forget that both catholic and protestant churches in Nazi Germany made sure that they sent Hitler official birthday greetings every year during the war. Sure, some did the right thing and hid Jews - but most did not. Indeed, many eagerly shoved Jews on trains "headed east" - after all, Jews were Christ killers. W/the long and ugly history of torture and murder that belongs to the Christian plague, you've got the crust to tap on your computer keyboard about the love that such a disease has spread on the face of this earth? The millions of battered, broken bodies that can be heaped up in evidence against your faith should be more than enough to turn anyone away from it! The one and only reason that Christians are presently trying to present a "kinder and gentler" face to the world is because the world will no longer take their crap! Great HUMAN BEINGS like Voltaire and Diderot and Locke and Hume and Paine pulled the teeth and fangs that Christianity had so gleefully used on all and sundry for more than 1000 years, so now you've all got to gum it!

Are you a world famous scholar w/a long trail of impressive initials behind your name? If that is what one needs to open his mouth in this world, then perhaps your mouth should have stayed shut!

Most of the major founding fathers were deists, who believe that yes God created the world and set it in motion, but then stepped back to let it run on its own. Roughly the same belief as many of the God Is Dead movement who felt it obvious that God, for some reason, was no longer active in the world.

Smarter? Hmmm, I don't believe in an all powerful, all knowing invisible magic man in the sky or talking snakes simply because someone convinced me of such, (at least not since i was 4) so at the very least I'm most likely wiser..lol.

Being a baptized Lutheran, I spent the younger part of my life searching for god but he never apparently had the time to answer my pleas, sad excuse for a heavenly father if you ask me. If he had just taken a split second out of his eternal life to pay me a visit I wouldn't be typing this... Fortunately his lack of enthusiasm, and my skepticism brought me out of the darkness and into a mindset to never stop asking questions, even if didn't like the answers.

People can believe whatever they like, I prefer to live my life using reason and logic, not an emotional faith indoctrinated upon me.

You might want to ask yourself what kind of person you would be without your god and see if you scare yourself.

I have read the bible, word for word, cover to cover. It is one of the most poorly written, scientifically ignorant, and morally repugnant things that I have ever read. That 'deciphering' that you talk about is something the media refers to as 'spin'.

Another 9 to 1 ratio that is interesting, is that 9 out of 10 Christians haven't even bothered to read the bible in it's entirety. I'm willing to bet that if more did, there would be a lot less of them.